Exploring sharpening workflows

Sharpness is a very subjective thing, and the amount of acceptable sharpness can really…vary from image to image. So I can't give you a simple recipe for sharpening, instead…you need to develop an eye and an aesthetic for what makes good sharpening and learn to…adjust your sharpening settings accordingly for each image, and that's what we are going…to spend the rest of this chapter exploring.…Right now, I want to talk about when you sharpen.…As mentioned before, if you're shooting JPEG, your camera might already have sharpened your…image enough so you may not need another sharpening step.…

If you're shooting RAW, then your images will be soft straight out of the camera.…Photoshop Camera Raw provides a sharpening control that allows you to apply a very small…amount of sharpening to make up for what gets lost to the filter that sits in front of your…camera's image sensor.…However, this sharpening control isn't really enough to get your image sharpened all the way to print.…You'll use it when processing your image in Camera Raw and then you'll perform the rest…

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Author

Updated

2/12/2018

Released

9/14/2012

In this course, photographer and author Ben Long explores the art and the craft of creating beautiful, archival-quality inkjet prints. The course looks at the anatomy of a print job: how a printer works, how to adjust and prepare your image to get the best results, and what happens to your photo in its journey from pixels to paper.

After a discussion of how to choose a printer, the course covers the process of preparing both black and white and color images using Adobe Photoshop. Ben describes how to take images from looking good onscreen to being properly adjusted for best results on paper, covering details such as sizing, sharpening, and color management.

With photographer and master framer Konrad Eek, Ben explores the creative decisions that photographers should address before printing. What size print? How does print size relate to the message of the photo and to the space where the photo will be displayed? What kinds of paper choices do you have, and how does your photo's content relate to the paper you choose?

The course also describes how to properly evaluate a print and how to handle common challenges that crop up during the printing process.